On the afternoon of April 29, 1965, a bittersweet celebration was held for an American airman stationed in Okinawa, Japan. The families of several other servicemen gathered to mark the thirty-third birthday of Air Force Captain Charles Shelton, even though he was not present. The decorated pilot had been chosen for a secret assignment relating to the Vietnam Conflict.

As she commingled with her guests, Charles’ wife Marian was all smiles until she glanced out the window and saw two uniformed officers slowly approaching the door. She recognized the fellow airmen and feared they were the bearers of bad news. They were, but there was a silver lining.

The officers told Marian that Charles’ plane had been shot down, but that they had made radio contact with him and that he had said he was unharmed. A search party had been dispatched and they were confident he would be rescued by days end. Mother Nature, however, soon hindered their efforts, and he was never found.

Long after American action in Vietnam and the conflict itself had concluded, Air Force Captain Charles Shelton was designated its last official POW (Prisoner of War.) Marian Shelton’s yeoman but failed efforts to learn her husband’s fate made her a collateral casualty of the Vietnam War.

Charles and Marian Shelton

Both natives of Davies County, Kentucky, ninety miles southwest of Louisville, Charles Shelton and Marian Vollman dated each other exclusively through high school and married after Marian graduated in 1951.

High School Sweethearts

Charles jointed the Air Force in 1954. In 1962, he was sent to Saigon to train South Vietnamese pilots. Three years later, having achieved the rank of Captain, he became the Air Force’s senior tactical reconnaissance pilot.

Serving his second tour of duty in Southeast Asia in 1965, Captain Shelton was based in Okinawa, Japan, and served thirty-day rotations at Thailand’s Udorn Airbase.

An Ascending Airman

Charles was soon joined in Okinawa by Marian and their five children, Lea Ann, Charles Jr., John, Michael, and Joan.

The Family Follows

Captain Shelton flew several secretive flights over Laos, the landlocked nation between Vietnam and Thailand. Though officially neutral in the Vietnam War, the largely communist-controlled country used as a staging area by the communist North Vietnamese was the frequent target of clandestine American bombings in what was codenamed Operation Barrel Roll.

A Covert War Was Fought in Laos

On April 26, 1965, Captain Charles Shelton was named the lead pilot assigned to conduct a photo reconnaissance mission over northern Laos. At approximately 11:00 a.m. on his birthday three days later, he departed Udorn Airbase flying an RF-101C fighter plane. Captain Richard Bilheimer, piloting an F-105 fighter bomber, served as his wingman.

Captain Shelton Begins His Covert Assignment

As bad weather prevented the men from photographing their initial target, they proceeded to their second target near Xam Neua, AKA Sam Neua, less than fifty miles from the Laos/North Vietnam border and less than one-hundred miles from China’s Yunnan Province. The communist Pathet Lao, supported by the North Vietnamese government, controlled the region, having command facilities, training centers, communication equipment, and personnel quartered throughout mountains and river caves.

Laos’s Sam Neua Region

Over Laos’s northeastern Xiangkhouang Province, Shelton and Bilheimer flew over the Plain of Jars region, a megalithic archaeological landscape named for the thousands of stone jars scattered throughout the area that are believed to have been created during the Iron Age.

Sam Neua’s Plain of Jars Region

As the pilots descended to 3,000 feet above ground level, Shelton’s plane was fired upon and Bilheimer saw the aircraft catch fire and its canopy fly off. He then saw Shelton eject and parachute to the ground.

A short time later, Shelton radioed that he had landed along a ridge and was uninjured. Knowing the Pathet Lao would be searching for him, he removed his parachute from the tree and buried it. A few hours later, two American rescue helicopters located his position, but poor visibility caused by low cloud coverage and approaching darkness made it too dangerous for them to maneuver into the woods to retrieve him. Rescue workers remained in radio contact with him throughout the evening.

Bad weather continued to hinder rescue efforts over the following two days, not abating until May 2, by which time radio contact with Shelton had been lost. After three more days of failed aerial searches involving multiple military aircraft and Air America, the CIA airline piloted by servicemen who were familiar with the rugged Laotian terrain, the search was called off.

Air Force Captain Charles Shelton was declared “Missing in Action.” Feared to have been captured by the Pathet Lao, he was also a presumed POW.

The admired airman whom rescuers thought would be easily retrieved was never found.

Captain Shelton Is MIA

And A Feared POW

American actions in Vietnam continued for another eight years. On January 23, 1973, President Richard Nixon announced the signing of the Paris Peace Accords ending United States involvement in the conflict. The acts took effect four days later.

The President also stated that all of the American POWs would be released within two months (sixty days) and that officials were in the process of compiling a list of POWs who were still alive and another of those who had perished in captivity.

That evening, Marian Shelton was informed her husband was not on the list of POWs who had survived.

A Light At End Of The Jungle Tunnel

Beginning on February 12 and continuing through April 4, five-hundred-ninety-one American POWs held by the North Vietnamese Armies, the Viet Cong, and three men held in China, were released during “Operation Homecoming.”

Air Force Captain Charles Shelton was not among the men who came home.

Soldiers Coming Home

Many who did disputed the Pentagon’s claim that all POWs had been freed and that any unaccounted serviceman were deceased. They insisted other Americans were still being held captive in Vietnam and across Southeast Asia, a claim confirmed by a 1972 propaganda film shot in North Vietnam showing American POWs in war camps. Charles Shelton was among those purported still living and still held captive.

Following the war’s official ending with the fall of Saigon to communist forces in April 1975, several million refugees fled Vietnam, upwards of a million of whom came on water to the United States. The “Boat People” told additional stories of American fighters still being held in prisons throughout Southeast Asia. Many were shackled in chains and starving, while others were forced into work gangs.

For reasons that are still debated, the American government withheld the refugees’ accounts in classified files.

Claims Disputed

Marian Shelton eventually received hundreds of classified documents through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Data compiled from interviews with Laotian villagers, informants, and defecting Pathet Lao soldiers and refugees suggests that her husband, captured in 1965, may have been alive well after American involvement in Vietnam ended in 1973 and after the war’s official end in 1975.

The information accumulated also confirmed rumored accounts of Captain Charles Shelton’s defiant resistance toward his captors.

Could Captain Shelton Still Be Alive?

The documents say that upon being shot down, Captain Shelton stayed hidden in the Laotian jungles for three days before villagers reported seeing him being captured by two Pathet Lao militia platoons on May 1, 1965. An American informant secretly embedded amongst the Pathet Lao guerrillas stated in an intelligence report that a defiant Shelton went limp upon being found, forcing his captors to physically carry him to a Sam Neua prison camp from where, over the following few months, he twice tried to escape. Unconfirmed reports state he was shot in the legs during one attempt.

Captain Shelton was then reportedly transferred to the new Pathet Lao Supreme Command headquarters in a complex of caves along a Sam Neua river where he and several other American POWs, most unidentified in reports, were interrogated. Remaining steadfastly belligerent, Shelton again refused to speak.

Captured But Not Capitulating

State Department and CIA records show that at least four teams were inserted into the Sam Neua area to look for the captured captain. A 1966 Air Force document states one of the searches involved the CIA’s Air America aircraft inserting a CAS (Controlled American Source) ground search team, including Richard Bilheimer, Shelton’s wingman, who had seen him parachute out of his plain, into the region. All search efforts failed to locate any trace of Charles Shelton, and the Air Force later claimed to have no record of Bilheimer’s participation.

This photo is of an Air America Bell 205 helicopter leaving a fire support base in the Laotian Plain of Jars region from where Captain Shelton had been captured.

Searches Are Unsuccessful

Reports compiled from American intelligence over the following three-and-a-half years tell of three to eleven prisoners being held in in ThamSue Cave near Ban Nakay Teu and Ban Nakay Neua, the grottos in northeast Laos’ Houaphan Province which Captain Shelton was trying to photograph when his plane was shot down.

Found in Captain Shelton’s casualty report file was a photo dated May 13, 1967, which had appeared in the Vietnam Courier. The caption, “An American airman captured in Laos,” is below the blacked-out individual’s face. The photo being found in Shelton’s file seems to indicate that he is the airman.

Confined In The Laotian Caves?

A CIA report dated January 5, 1969, states an intercepted radio transmission between Pathet Lao headquarters and Hanoi suggested the prisoners had been turned over to the North Vietnamese for interrogation on June 10, 1968. Shortly afterward, Captain Shelton is said to have taken his resistance one step further, by, in a sense, becoming Rambo, Chuck Norris, and Jackie Chan rolled into one in overpowering and beating three North Vietnamese soldiers to death with a metal chair after they attempted to chain him to a desk for interrogation.

This report concluded that following the incident, the North Vietnamese ordered the “incorrigible” Shelton be moved north, likely meaning to either Hanoi in North Vietnam or to China.

In August, two months later, reports were received that Shelton was bound in chains or manacles and confined to a shallow pit with bars over the top and subjected to constant poking by his captors to prevent him from sleeping.

  Reports of Resistance and Torture

The Pathet Lao claims Air Force Captain Charles Shelton and David Hrdlicka, another Air Force Captain who was captured in May 1965, one month after Shelton, both died in captivity in 1968, and their remains were buried in a shallow grave but were lost when the burial pit was shattered from American air strikes.

Multiple sources, including former military personnel, however, state Shelton and Hrdlicka were still alive in 1971 and were returned to northern Laos. At the time, Vietnam and the United States were negotiating the release of POWs, but there were no such direct negotiations with Laos.

Shelton And David Hrdlicka

The Pathet Lao Claims The Pilots Perish

That same year, some documents say the CIA launched another rescue effort code-named “Operation Duck Soup,” the nature and execution of which is still debated.

Some sources contend the controversial covert mission resulted in Shelton and Hrdlicka being rescued by a CIA-supported team of Hmong, a Laotian ethnic group, and turned over to an American team of “CIA agents and Army Special Forces” for approximately ten days, before being returned to their captors, either to gather more intelligence about the Pathet Lao headquarters where they were being held or returned to protect the cover of the rescuers.

Other documents say the pilots were recaptured in a counter-attack while others state Operation Duck Soup was only a proposed rescue effort that never commenced.

Did “Operation Duck Soup” Occur?

Believing her husband was still alive and imprisoned in Laos, Marian Shelton and Louisville Courier-Journal reporter Leah Larkin traveled to the region in August 1973, four months after the Pentagon’s declaration that all American POW’s had been returned and seven months after American involvement in the Vietnam Conflict officially ended. Aided by an American pilot who was fluent in local dialects, they successfully sneaked into the country and spoke to several local villagers near a cave where the missing serviceman was believed, at one time, to have been held.

Natives confirmed they had seen prisoners in the cave, but no one recognized Captain Shelton from photographs and the women found no concrete evidence suggesting he had ever been there.

Marian’s Mission

Undeterred, Marian became one of the leading figures in the POW-MIA movement.

On October 7, 1980, she was granted a status review hearing of her husband, then missing for over fifteen years, before a three-person Air Force Review Board in San Antonio, Texas. Seven-hundred-ninety-three unaccounted Air Force servicemen had already had their classification changed from missing to presumed dead; in a 2-1 ruling, the board recommended that Charles Shelton should be number seven-hundred-ninety-four.

Marching Marian  

Four years later, however, Secretary of the Air Force Vernon Orr rejected the board’s recommendation and upheld Captain Charles Shelton’s status of “prisoner of war,” making him the only one of the then 2,641 missing American serviceman from the Vietnam War not to be listed as presumed dead.  Orr said Shelton would be retained in active POW status until the fate of every American missing from Southeast Asia was known.

Shelton’s Status Remains That Of A POW

Reports further gathered by American intelligence say that the last official POW of the Vietnam War was still alive into the 1980s. Some reports written between 1981 and 1985 state Captain Shelton was held in Prison Camp 214 near Tchepone, AKA Xepon, in southeastern Laos, while two other reports indicate he was being held in Vietnam.

In August 1986, a former American intelligence agent stated he was told by United States intelligence analysts that in April 1985 Shelton was transferred to Ho Thach Bai, an island prison under triple-canopy jungle northwest of Hanoi. Located in a man-made reservoir, the “Alcatraz of Vietnam” was said to have been established especially for post-war POWs. Another report said Shelton was teaching at a high-security military prison near Haiphong, three months later, in November.

An August 1987 Associated Press news story reported that Laotian officials had agreed to account for three Americans, one of them being Charles Shelton, known to be prisoners in their country, but no subsequent action was taken by the government.

Unconfirmed reports placed Shelton still in Haiphong in 1988 and at a high-security Vietnamese prison camp near Hanoi the following year.  An alleged former Laotian terrorist stated at the time that America’s last official POW, by then in his early-to-mid-fifties, was called “Shaker,” was balding, had lost all of his teeth, and was in poor health.

Subsequent Reports State Shelton Was Still Alive

Marian Shelton took to the airwaves, promoting the POW-MIA movement and speaking about her husband’s saga. All the while, her exhaustive efforts to learn his fate were destroying her.

Marian On The Phil Donahue Show

Excessive alcohol consumption forced Marian to be hospitalized on several occasions in 1987 and 1988. Her condition worsened over the following two years, culminating on October 4, 1990, with her shooting herself in her head in her San Diego garden.

In a suicide note left for her children, Marian wrote “I love you all so much . . . I have done all I can. I am sorry.”

Marian Takes Her Life

Marian Shelton was one of the most active people in trying to bring home the missing servicemen from the Vietnam War. One former Congressman said she was the POW-MIA movement.

She was laid to rest at Arlington National Cemetery.

The Foremost Figure

Four years later, on October 4, 1994, a memorial service was held for Charles Shelton at America’s most hallowed ground, after the still missing airman was officially declared to have paid the ultimate sacrifice in fighting for his country.

The Still Missing Airman

Is Honored At Arlington

At the reluctant request of the Shelton children, the Air Force, on September 19, 1994,  changed their father’s status from “prisoner of war” to “killed in action”, after the Joint Task Force-Full Accounting, a Pentagon agency seeking to account for missing American military personnel, failed to find anything suggesting he was still alive. Believing they had done everything possible to determine their father’s fate, the family asked for the change in status to put the matter to rest and, figuratively speaking, their father as well.

The Shelton siblings requested the date of October 4, exactly four years after their mother’s suicide, to commemorate their missing father.

The Shelton Children Have Their Father Declared Dead

(2015 photo)

In the years after his plane was shot down, the Air Force promoted the missing Charles Shelton from Captain to Colonel. The placing of his headstone next to that of Marian’s is probably the closest they will come to laying to rest together.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/14866080/charles-ervin-shelton

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/20061037/dorothy_marian-shelton

Resting Together In Name Only

Both Charles and Marian said it was love at first sight when they met as teenagers on a tennis court. Eldest child Lea Ann says her parents called each other their “first, only, and last love.”

As they began their wedded life together in 1951, a family friend who was a priest said he never saw two people more in love than Charles and Marian.

Young Marian and Charles

Instant Love Birds

After becoming a leader in the POW-MIA movement, Marian said in a speech, “Charles was my childhood sweetheart, my best friend, my protector. I prepared myself, as did my husband, for him to be wounded, captured, or killed. But we were never prepared for him to be abandoned by his own country.”

Marian’s sentiments stemmed from her belief that the United States did not negotiate for the release of POWs held by the Pathet Lao because it did not formally recognize the communist government of Laos and wanted to keep secret its covert actions in the country. She believed a photo found amongst her husband’s personal items after his capture was proof.

Lost In Laos

A picture developed from a roll of film showed Captain Shelton wearing a sanitized uniform, devoid of any official insignia. The photo was confirmed to have been taken shortly before his ill-fated flight into Laos.

Many believe this picture supports Marian’s contentions that the government sought to hide its armed forces involvement in Laos.

Captain Shelton In A “Sanitized” Uniform

The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) says 1,582 American POWs from the Vietnam War remain unaccounted for. Air Force Captain Charles Shelton is among nearly six-hundred of these servicemen lost in Laos. His reported resistance in the face of torture is legendary in military circles and is purported to have earned the begrudging respect of his captors.

Charles Shelton is certain to have perished somewhere in Southeast Asia, but the question of when he died is still unclear. He is among the four-hundred-eighty-eight missing servicemen who are classified as “non-recoverable,” meaning his remains are believed destroyed.

The last official American POW of the Vietnam War is also a lost POW.

The Last And The Lost

Charles Shelton’s plane was shot down over Laos on April 29, 1965, his thirty-third birthday. The fall of Saigon officially ending the Vietnam War occurred ten years and one day later, on April 30, 1975.

Ten Years Later

The Colonel Charles E. Shelton Memorial at Smothers Park along the Ohio River, in Owensboro, Kentucky, pays tribute to the missing native son, and to all POW/MIAs.

The last POW of the Vietnam War is also memorialized at the Courts of the Missing at the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.

     

Honoring The Heroic Kentucky Colonel

Charles Shelton was shot down while piloting an RF101C jet fighter dubbed “Voodoo.” Made by McDonnell, the fighter plane was the world’s first supersonic photo-reconnaissance aircraft.

An RF101C “Voodoo” Aircraft

Similar To The One Flown by Shelton

SOURCES:

• Arlington National Cemetery Website
• Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA)
• Los Angeles Times
• Louisville Courier-Journal
• New York Times
• Owensboro (Kentucky) Messenger-Inquirer
• Owensboro Times
• POW Network
• Santa Cruz Sentinel
• Unsolved Mysteries
• Washington Post